What, we have two specs that dont stack to expertise cap. Compare that to every other class in the game and your sentence makes no sense.

The fuck?
Combat has always capped expertise.
Don't remember Sub NOT capping expertise either...
Assassination was an exception to the rule, however, it no longer is. Due to itemization and stat-weights, capping expertise is now ideally done for Assassination as well. Literally speaking, every single spec of ours ideally wants to reach the expertise cap. Which is a good thing, in my opinion! I don't like the thought of the "HIT THE ENEMY" stats being "bad" to have.

Assassination was an exception to the rule, however, it no longer is. Due to itemization and stat-weights, capping expertise is now ideally done for Assassination as well.

Wait what? Exactly what gear level are you talking about. I'm at 485 and both mastery AND crit are better than exp for assassination according to shadowcraft. And everything I have ever read on elitist jerks has said ignore exp for mastery. Hell I even asked the question specifically and they said stack mastery over exp. So not really sure where you get off saying that, would love a source.

Without the legendary, haste would pull through above expertise, but it'd still be more valuable than either crit or mastery.
With the legendary, capping hit and expertise became the first priority.
If you had full T13, capping expertise was most definitely the way to go.

And even if what you say is true... It's no longer the case. Currently, haste is slightly ahead of expertise, but it's still more valuable than crit and mastery. In ideal gear, the expertise and hit caps will both be reached.

---------- Post added 2012-11-19 at 10:52 AM ----------

Originally Posted by theturn

Wait what? Exactly what gear level are you talking about. I'm at 485 and both mastery AND crit are better than exp for assassination according to shadowcraft. And everything I have ever read on elitist jerks has said ignore exp for mastery. Hell I even asked the question specifically and they said stack mastery over exp. So not really sure where you get off saying that, would love a source.

At some later gear levels, haste supposedly outperforms crit, but I'm apparently not there yet. Either way, you'll very likely have expertise at its cap anyway with higher ilvl gear.

You said "capping expertise is now ideally done for Assassination as well" which is not true. Right now you are actively reforging off expertise if it gives you more mastery. I'm about 800 expertise below cap and if I try to cap it I lose dps.

Reason crit was so bad in cata was bc poisons didnt scale off melee crit. That + the fact rogues need so much crit rating for 1% (compared to haste/mastery) Now that they do, I think crits higher valued than haste. coldblood was 3minutes last i played ass in ds...

Crit is an expensive stat. In order for crit to be good it has to interact with the class/spec's mechanics in a significant way. The only spec currently for which this is remotely true is assassination--but seal fate isn't good enough to make crit worth getting unless it's paired with mastery or hit. I bet you if crits gave find weakness (even if a significantly less powerful version of it) that all of a sudden sub would start caring a lot about crit.

1% crit and 1% haste both equate to 1% extra damage neither stat has any particular preference for autoattacks and derived damage or special attacks.
it takes 600 stat points to get 1% crit but only 425 stat points to get 1% haste.

Mutilate currently values crit and haste essentially the same. You can still reforge- I gained 60 spreadsheet dps from switching from my hand reforges that favored haste over crit to crit over haste- but it wasn't really worth it. It's at the point where it is not statistically significant. If you do 60k dps (which is pretty low for a mutilate rogue in epics, my spreadsheet is 80something), then upping it by 60 dps is adding not 1%, not a tenth of a percent, but one hundredth of a percent. That's so far lost in the noise it doesn't matter.

We are used to previous EP values with stuff like, crit 0.75, haste 1.1. When we see crit 1.01 and crit .98, WHO CARES???

As gear improves, haste will pull ahead, and probably by enough eventually to not be a mere 60 spreadsheet dps. But for now, these two stats don't matter, except that you should reforge them to mastery!

I agree that Cold Blood was virtually useless in PvE, however it was rather useful in PvP. Sure, an on-demand crit every 3 minutes isn't groundbreaking design, but at the very least it landed me a few significant kills. In my opinion it should make a reappearance in the shape of something slightly more interesting and strategy-friendly.

Maybe have it reduce critical chance by 50% for 5 seconds (activated once you deal a blow) after which it increases it by 100% (i.e. crit rating is doubled) for another 5 seconds? It would certainly make crit a more important stat, and it wouldn't be too powerful to have on a short cooldown (say 1-1.5min).

Crit is really an outlier stat, it lacks the synergy that exists between haste and mastery. If they really wanted to make it more interesting then they need to do something like make another stat (agility? expertise?) increase your critical hit damage multiplier. We did get shadow blades which is quite a good trade off for cold blood, but maybe they need to buff the class by making cold blood a new cd to be used for assassination, then put it in the current place of vendetta and make vendetta a talent so you can get it with every spec. Currently rogue talents completely stink, and the sad thing is that if you were to take the old cold blood and put it in as a talent it would be better from a dps standpoint in almost every talent level than what there currently is.

Most people would rather die than think, and most people do. -Bertrand RussellIdeas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns. Why should we let them have ideas? -Joseph Stalin

Crit is really an outlier stat, it lacks the synergy that exists between haste and mastery. If they really wanted to make it more interesting then they need to do something like make another stat (agility? expertise?) increase your critical hit damage multiplier. We did get shadow blades which is quite a good trade off for cold blood, but maybe they need to buff the class by making cold blood a new cd to be used for assassination, then put it in the current place of vendetta and make vendetta a talent so you can get it with every spec. Currently rogue talents completely stink, and the sad thing is that if you were to take the old cold blood and put it in as a talent it would be better from a dps standpoint in almost every talent level than what there currently is.

Having something that increases the damage a crit provides seems to be a good idea at first sight but if you look more in details, you will see that this is actually an illusion : of course this will increase the value of the crit stat but this will also increase the value of haste just because haste also increases the number of critical effects you get per second (and DPS is Damage Per Second, at least in PVE). The only place where this strategy will increase the value of crit rating compared to the haste rating is about Rupture and Venomous Wounds crits because haste has no effect on the frequency of these damages.

The only strategy I see to increase the value of crit compared to other stats is to provide something new when Rupture and/or Venomous Wounds have a critical effect. Here are some examples which need to be tuned and I am pretty sure all of you will have better ideas than mine :
- an extra proc of Dispatch with maybe reduced energy cost (0 energy would be OP).
- a small amount of energy like Focussed Attacks used to provide (maybe 15 points as Rupture ticks only every two seconds). This would also help to reduce the energy starvation of the Assassination spec.
- activating a buff on the target during 1, 2 or 3 seconds which would allow to refresh rupture for free (i.E. without consuming your current CP and 0 energy cost). If Rupture is not actually refreshed during this buff, then the benefit is lost after these 1, 2 or 3 seconds.
- ... (your turn)...

Having something that increases the damage a crit provides seems to be a good idea at first sight but if you look in more details, you will see that this is actually an illusion : of course this will increase the value of the crit stat but this will also increase the value of haste just because haste also increases the number of critical effects you get per second (and DPS is Damage Per Second, at least in PVE). The only place where this strategy will increase the value of crit rating compared to the haste rating is about Rupture and Venomous Wounds crits because haste has no effect on the frequency of these damages.

The only strategy I see to increase the value of crit compared to other stats is to provide something new when Rupture and/or Venomous Wounds have a critical effect. Here are some examples which need to be tuned and I am pretty sure all of you will have better ideas than mine :
- an extra proc of Dispatch with maybe reduced energy cost (0 energy would be OP).
- a small amount of energy like Focussed Attacks used to provide (maybe 15 points as Rupture ticks only every two seconds). This would also help to reduce the energy starvation of the Assassination spec.
- activating a buff on the target during 1, 2 or 3 seconds which would allow to refresh rupture for free (i.E. without consuming your current CP and 0 energy cost). If Rupture is not actually refreshed during this buff, then the benefit is lost after these 1, 2 or 3 seconds.
- ... (your turn)...

PS : sorry for my bad knowledge in English :/

EDIT : polishing the "refresh Rupture for free" proc.

I like the Rupture idea, but it'd be incredibly powerful for Assassination.
- First of all, it'd give us sufficient reason to stack crit, meaning we'll already have a passive increase in combo point generation
- Secondly, seeing as SND is already trivial to keep up, this would also trivialize the upkeep of Rupture, giving us even more combo points to spend on Envenom

These two factors would most likely result in a dramatic increase in Envenom up-time, due to our ability to keep both SND and Rupture rolling at no cost whatsoever, and the increased amount of combo points we have to spend due to Seal Fate. It sounds awesome in theory though! I'd love to see it hit live.

I am not sure the "refresh rupture for free" buff would be that powerfull because it will not give additionnal combo points, at most it will give some energy regen thanks to Relentless Strikes and also more combo points will be dedicated to Envenom (those which are not spent for Rupture anymore).
The duration of the buff should be short enough to require some attention not to lose the proc. Maybe a 2 second duration is a good balance (because of the 1 second GCD). This will slightly increase the complexity of the optimal rotation and reduce the idle time.

The refreshed Rupture will have the power given by the number of combo points you have when you use the buff and press Rupture to refresh it. This would add a little thinking to the cycle : ok, I have a 5 CP rupture running and I have just get a proc while I have 1 CP, should I use the buff to refresh or wait for another proc ?
If you are reactive enough, because of the 2 second duration of the buff, you may have the time to choose to add a Mutilate to refresh Rupture with 2 or 3 more CP but the time window will be quiet small... skill bonus

EDIT : Of course, this buff will show only if Rupture is already running, so it is not a "Rupture for free" like "Cut to the Chase" gives for Slice'n Dice. Rupture will still need some management : the refresh is not automatic, you have to actually press the rupture button to use the buff at the moment of your cycle or its benefit is lost. And when rupture is over (because you got no proc or just choose to wait for a later proc which did not come), you will have to refresh it by paying with combo points.

I don't see Crit coming out on top unless they bring the Crit percentages back that we saw in T7-Ulduar. Crit was good for lots of classes then, I know Fury warriors would rock nearly 50% crit unbuffed in BiS Ulduar gear iirc.

Bring back Focused Attacks and crit will finally be useful for rogues.

Crit's problem is that its rating conversion is determined around specs that function around crits (fire mages, warriors, etc.) because Blizzard wants to avoid the insane scaling that happened with some classes in WoTLK. So if you're a spec that doesn't have a mechanic that boosts the value of crit or requires crit to function properly then haste will be stronger because 1% haste is cheaper than 1% crit.

The best ways to deal with this problem is to add an equivalent mechanic to every spec or just increase the value of crit on specs that don't have a "crit mechanic" like Elemental Fury for Ele Shaman where your crits do more than 200% damage.